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Adaptive Response to Environmental Stress

Goals: to provide expert evaluation and support for intra- and inter-programmatic research initiatives related to oxidative stress and other molecular mechanisms associated with environmental exposures.

Focus: motivating new research initiatives by enabling technologies, and providing SWEHSC investigators access to scientific and educational activities as well as nurturing research opportunities with environmental health experts.

Discovered that exposing human cells to levels of arsenic often found in real world situations produces new pathologic epigenetic landscapes that participate in the malignant transformation of human cells.

Identified the role of oxidative stress in an animal model of UV-induced carcinogenesis, leading to the identification of small molecule interventions that block solar UV-induced skin cancer by activating the NRF2 antioxidant response pathway as a cytoprotective adaptive response of human skin to solar exposure.

Identified a mechanism by which arsenic exposure induces unique changes in gene expression using bioinformatics resources in the IHSFC and Genomics FC that is being developed into a biomarker for arsenic-mediated cancers.

The Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center (P30 ES006694) is a Unit of the Center for Toxicology, at the College of Pharmacy, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. We also acknowledge the people – past, present, and future – of the Tohono O'odham Nation, on whose traditional lands we study and work.